Larry Ryan: A great natural energy source is restored — kids are playing games
Andrew Omobamidele and Rianna Jarrett with Morgan Coffey (age 8), Stella Toomey (age 9), Joshua Ward (age 9), Liam White (age 9), Liadan Kelly (age 10) and Ross Ward (age 7) at the Intersport Elverys Summer Schools Launch this week. Picture: INPHO/Bryan Keane
What if newspapers covered only the games that mean the very most to us. You’d be reading today of matches played in back gardens, schoolyards, and greens.
Accuracy of reporting might prove elusive, since even the players involved often go home with very different interpretations of the final score.
But you’d never lack for a colourful post-match quote. ‘Tell us about that goal you scored.’
Sure, hurling is in crisis, the Premier League petered out in a puff of ennui, the Olympics is still in doubt. But all around us, our communal love of sport is renewing its vows. One of the great natural energy sources has been restored — kids are playing games.
At training sessions, they have been set free from the inhumane prison of ‘non-contact’, they are released from the purgatory of drills.
Today I am transported home via Zoom for a chat with the sixth class at Templederry National School. And quickly reminded this is a very special time in the calendar.
The School League is back. Classrooms and families are divided. Deep tribal loyalties to team colours of green and blue and white and red have been stirred. Captains are finalising strategies, lunchtimes are given over to challenge matches and training sessions. And there are 24 five-a-side hurling games down for decision over the next four weeks.
It is their Euros, their Olympics. And today, the greens pip the reds in a thriller. It’s only right you read about it in the paper.
Bruno Fernandes is a suitable talisman for the current Manchester United — and not just because of the steady supply of penalties.
To the casual observer who might not be watching United every week, Bruno always seems to be having an uncharacteristic off-night, constantly misplacing passes in a manner the commentators suggest is most unlike him.
Yet he is piling up the goals and assists and the numbers don’t lie, they tell us, just like the table. At the same time, when we see Manchester United finish second in the table, we can’t help think someone is pulling the wool over our eyes, because it is not easy to recall many times when they have played all that well.
Tonight, penalties, for once, can’t rescue them and the manager again stands accused of failing to intervene tactically to solve a puzzle for his team. Much like Bruno, will we ever know what to make of Ole?
He might be one of the great genius minimalists, getting the very most out of his side by getting out of their way.
While men like Unai Emery wear out technical areas with their pacing and thinking, Ole favours the concerned but distant frown of a Stokes Kennedy Crowley observer. Checking his little screen to monitor how things are going, but well aware there’s not much he can really do if it goes wrong.
There’s something refreshing about it, in this era of big brain micromanagement from the touchline. Perhaps by the time United’s slow but steady ascent to the summit is complete, Ole’s players will have received the perfect footballing education in working things out for themselves.
Today, a collector’s item: Corkman admits to brief lapse in confidence.
Spike O’Sullivan returns to the ring in Belgium on Saturday and has been entertaining us at the Examiner retelling his life story in a podcast recorded over a few sessions.
It’s out this morning and spins a great tale of Spike’s first fight in Madison Square Garden.
Buoyed by a sense of occasion, he goes shopping in New York and treats himself to a white fur tracksuit with gold trim, gold shoes to match.
As he puts it, “Ali G wouldn’t wear it.”
Night of the fight he puts it on in the hotel bedroom, looks in the mirror and baulks. ‘I can’t do it, it’s too much’.
Due to be collected by taxi with a couple of other fighters, he’s back in his street clothes and getting out of the lift in the lobby when a text pings from home. Former Cork hurler and current selector Diarmuid O’Sullivan.
The Rock’s message is direct: “Walk into the Garden like you own it.”
Spike turns. “Lads, back in a second.” When the doors of the lift open again, “the lads were nearly blinded”.
This time, he waves off the taxis: “I’ll see ye down there.” And Spike walks down 7th Avenue, in full regalia, horns beeping, before winning by knockout in boxing’s Mecca.
Also in today’s sport section, former Kilkenny great Brian Hogan expresses some concerns about the Cork hurlers’ current passing style, wondering if a very structured, formulaic gameplan can withstand the heightened intensity of championship.
“It’s like the old saying,” he says. “Plans are great until you get a punch in the face.”
It’s a reasonable concern, but we also have to consider that they will have Sully, not just ringside, but striding across the ring, carrying the hurleys, constantly reminding them that they own the place, and that they are from Cork.
The Templederry youngsters bring a healthy competitive streak to the writing game too: “What’s the longest word you could get in an article?”
So, it’s fair to say there has been a certain amount of floccinaucinihilipilification around the Champions League final, an urge to devalue this occasion as a faux showpiece, an unnatural rise purchased by dirty money.
But there is something pure too about a battle of two football men who have climbed to the top of their profession through absolute immersion in the game and obsession with details.
We learn today that Tuchel once spent two hours studying a Guardiola passing graph. And much of the buildup is focusing on the famed meeting of master and apprentice in a Munich pub, when they pushed the salt cellars round their table for hours like chess pieces, and distilled the creation of space down to milliseconds and millimetres.
Speaking to The Athletic last year, another rising German coach, Borussia Dortmund assistant Rene Maric, described well the helplessness all coaches experience, but also how the best ones prepare players for that punch in the face.
“There are infinite decisions made in a game of football. It’s impossible for the coach to make these decisions for the players. We can give them a guideline or a 'solution space' through principles, they have to perceive, decide, and execute on the pitch.
"What makes Pep Guardiola special is the amount of technical and tactical content he is able to communicate to his team, enabling them to react to problems. During his Bayern days, it didn’t matter what opponents did — within a split second, they could change, adapt, and find a new solution.”
Of course there are some things even the details men can’t control. We know Pep wants the grass no longer than 23mm.
We hear today that Tuchel, who likes to get down and sniff it, is content with 27mm. Perhaps the Porto groundsman is Saturday’s key player.
There are lots of ambitious ‘details men’ out there, whose immersion in coaching often poses a real hindrance to youngsters who just want to enjoy a game of ball.
An antidote arrived on Friday and I’ll start reading it today. , a book by Larry Mahony, who has done it all in Irish soccer coaching, at League of Ireland and grassroots and the FAI.
If you had to distill Larry’s philosophy into a paragraph, it might be one right at the start of the book.
“Years of trying to figure out the best way to help players has taught me that the more cones there are, the further the training is from the real game and the less young players like it.
“So the majority of their practice time should be spent in games, where the picture is constantly changing and challenging their football brains. They must, like you and I did when we were children, spend their day in school looking forward to playing with their friends in the evening’s session.”
Probably even better if they’ve made a start during the School League.
- ‘Let the Players Play’ is available now at bigpicturecoachingireland.com
